lost in reverie

STICK IT (2006) dir. Jessica Bendinger

Jane Austen emphasizes marrying prudently, but without sufficient independent wealth (rare), a woman's life becomes tied to a good man's survival. Mr. Dashwood inheriting late and dying early put his wife and daughter's fates in the hands of his selfish son. When women cannot work, they must hope that their fathers live until they marry, hope that their brothers will take care of them, and hope to be provided for as widows. Even love matches can end in ruin if the man holding the money is incompetent, as Mrs. Smith in Persuasion emphasizes. But men are supposed to provide for the dependant women in their lives, Jane Austen points to this social contract again and again, so why does it fail? Because there are almost no consequences when men refuse to do their duty. No one shuns John Dashwood for the way he treats his female relations. The only ones with the power to hold men accountable are men themselves, and why would they do that?

Not to mention that a man can uproot his entire family's life without any need to consult them (North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell), the jobs available to women were degrading and poorly paid (Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë), escaping abuse was dangerous and legally difficult (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë & Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë), being born as an intelligent woman was seen as a curse because it was useless and wouldn't get you married (The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot), etc. etc. etc.

(this novel was first published in 1848, so i will not be tagging for spoilers. i think 178 years is plenty of time to either read it or get a sparknotes summary.)

i am not ok, but in the absolute best way. i was honestly delighted by how quickly and easily i fell in love with the story, especially because i was not expecting to. it's been awhile since i couldn't put a book down, and i had to force myself to go to bed last night because i was literally falling asleep sitting up as i was trying to read, and unwilling to capitulate. i had to know what happened next!

one of the aspects of this story i love best is that although the cruelty of huntingdon is shocking and horrible, even if you realise it's coming, it is, compared to a lot of other gothic fiction, a mundane horror. people like arthur huntingdon existed then, and they certainly exist today. the danger brontë describes is still (unfortunately) too important not to discuss. i was sitting there in utter terror, screaming in my head OMG NO SHE THINKS SHE CAN FIX HIM and if i'd had a physical book, i would have been clutching the edges so hard my fingertips would have been white.

it's interesting to me how brontë drew both the characters of helen and huntingdon, because each in their own way is an extreme that i don't think is very common—though definitely not impossible—and both are because so many people of the period required helen to be nearly a living saint and huntingdon to essentially be the devil himself for people to sympathise with her. and i'm willing to bet even then, there were those who still thought she should have stayed. they were wrong, helen should have stabbed him in the eye, but i guess not everyone is circumspect enough to see that.

and gilbert. oh, gilbert. one of his greatest strengths is that, in all honesty, he's just some guy. he's a member of the gentry, yes, but not an especially high-born one, he doesn't have any illustrious connections, his dad didn't seem to have a deleterious effect on his principles, he participates in the labour of his farm. he even seems to have developed the foundation of some of these principles despite his mother catering to him all the time. that's what's so fabulous about him, though, is because brontë goes to great lengths to show that it doesn't take an especially great man to be kind and gentlemanly and good to women.

i do have a mini-rant about how people talk about gilbert, which i'm not going to indulge in much of here, but i'm deeply sick of how it seems like anyone who wants to defend him has to talk about how, yes, he's flawed. of course he is! that's a human being! anne brontë wouldn't be even half the writer she is if she didn't make him have some flaws, because ordinary people usually have a host of them! i'm not even talking about his hitting his friend lawrence with the whip, because 1) that was completely provoked, and 2) i actually thought it was wonderful that he didn't immediately come out of it with good grace and an acute sense that he'd done wrong. i loved that it took him a little bit to admit that to himself, because that's people. anyway.

ahhh, thank you for pointing out my error in calling gilbert gentry! i deeply associate yeomen with the canterbury tales and therefore get confused about when that term/class stopped being used; but you're right, the manual labour should have turned on the light bulb.

i had a mini growth arc when it came to considering helen's religiosity. i'm not very religious myself, so i kind of chalked it up at first to being within average for the time and was perhaps slightly dismissive of it, but as i went on it dawned on me, 'oh, she's clinging to this for dear life! it's her anchor!' i'm not sure how to articulate it, but there's something about helen using her faith as the lens through which she views herself, and that to lose her faith means to lose herself; she is well-rounded, but faith is her bedrock. and i really admired her for that.

i love how anne brontë was so unafraid to make people, even usually amiable and calm people, prickly. it seems like every character, even some of the more minor ones, gets pushed to a point where they just can't anymore and is a human being about it. and fergus! such sibling energy, where you see your sibling and you must do violence, there is no other option. he is 100% teenage boy, like the thing about him making the joke at tea and then not being able to hold back his laughter to the point he almost chokes, that is just so real. we all know that kid, we've seen that kid, we may even be related to that kid. :)

also! tiny arthur! i was ready to kidnap him from huntingdon myself well before helen's diary was finished.

so here is a riddle,

to guess if you can,

sing the bells of notre dame

Kvothe: